May Tag Friday for A Vintage Journey

Hello friends and thanks for dropping in! Today's post is going to be a super quick  you may be glad to hear😊.

It's the last Friday of the month, when over at A Vintage Journey, creative guides share a tag, just for fun and like always, if you like making tags you can share them with us there.
For my tag (which will be part of a larger project I will tell you more about at a later point) I pulled out some of my Oxide Inks and sprays, some Tim Holtz stamps and just had a play.

I used a little embossing folder along one of the sides, and highlighted the raised bits with Treasure Gold in the colour Pewter.

A few tickets, some lace, a mini doily and some fussycut flowers, finished it all off.

Well that's it for today, you can check out my teamies tags here and like always, we would love you to play along and show us your tags.

Thank you for visiting like always, stay safe and well and happy crafting!

xxxxx

An album tutorial, creating embellishments and a freebie

Hello friends and thank you for joining me here today. I have been asked a lot recently about my journals and notebooks and how I make them, so I thought I would attempt to write a kind of tutorial for beginners.

So here goes (there are no step out photos, but I will try and talk you through the process).

This little album is made from a craft coloured file folder, but you could just as easily make it out card, I just happen to have a pile of these folders and I like the  extension they have in their spine. I cut it to the size I wanted, mine is about 5" high and 8 " wide. I inked around all the edges and then covered both the front and the back with papers from the Shabby Damask paper collection in my Etsy shop.

As you can see I wrapped some coffee dyed lace around the spine, very easy to do by disolving the cheapest Nescafe you can find in a large mug with boiling water and then dipping your lace in it for just a few moments, and voila, instant vintage effect.

The front was further embellished with more lace, some bits of cheese cloth and some fussy cut embellishments from the Shabby Damask Add On kit, also in my Etsy

The closure is made with two little diamond shaped elements from the kit that I mounted on thick card, covered with Glossy Accents and once it had dried I glued on small bits of further card to lift them from the background so to speak, so that I then could simply wrap some 1mm hat elastic around them. 

I glued the knot in the elastic onto the back cover, underneath the "button" and the loop can then just be wrapped around the button on the front cover.

OK, onto some of the inside pages. I created several flaps and pockets, mostly using leftover bits of the file folder. I'll let the photos do the talking, you can obviously add as many or as few as you wish.

The simplest way to add flaps is to cut leftover bits of the folder to the size you want them, score about 1/2 inch along one of the sides to attach the flap and then glue in place using a strong adhesive. Do this before you cover the inside main parts with you chosen papers, to hide the glue strips. However, for the more complicated shaped flaps and pockets, add paper before gluing it into the main part of the folder.

Here are some close up views of the different parts:

The inside of the cover.  I added a pocket and a little notebook.

this is the front of the notebook

To make the notebook, cut however many pieces of any kind of paper plus a piece of thick card or greyboard to exactly the same size. Clip them at the top with some bulldog clips or similar, with the grey board at the bottom and then cover this  whole wad  with a thick line of glue. If you have bookbinding glue use that, I just used PVA and it works fine. You may have to move the clips while doing this, but then put them straight back so that it is all really clamped together. Next let it dry really well, preferably over night. Once dry cut a piece of decorative paper to the same width but about 3 inches longer than your notebook and wrap it around, gluing at the top and overlapping at the back.
Here you can see the back:

And here the side:

 

This is the inside view.You can leave it as plain as you want, I just used plain printer paper, but you could stamp, use decorative papers or whatever.

These little notebooks are perfect for using scraps of paper and make super little gifts just by themselves too.
Well this post is getting way too long so I am just going to show you a few more pages, like I said, you can add as many pockets, flaps and tags as you want.

Here I used one of the elements that is on the freebie as a belly band, and tucked two bits from the add on kit underneath.

I made a little book with some coffe dyed papers and sewed that in behind one of the flaps.

Here the inside pages have coffee dyed paper, I just used the most common pamflet stitch to sew it.

Here you can see a flap that folds down. On this one I added the cover paper before attaching the flap.

Here you can see what is behind that flap, another pocket and a little bookmark made with another element from the freebie.

A close up of the book mark above.

Here another flap, both front and back below

And here a little envelope with more little tickets and tags tucked inside.

I also altered some paper clips that can be added to pages.

There are numerous tutorials on Youtube on how to make them, so I won't go into detail about them.

And now finally the freebie, here it is:

Now sadly blogger won't let me upload a high resolution of it, and as I found out last time, Etsy does not let you upload free items, so I had to ask for a silly amount of money for that "freebie",which had not been my intention. So this time I thought, if you want a high resolution of this, which will make it better for printing, just send me an email and I will send it to you direct.

Thanks for visiting like always, and happy crafting!

xxxxx

From freebies to downloads and a little gift

Hello friends and thanks for dropping into this sadly neglected blog!
Hope you are all doing well and staying safe!!
Today I have some personal news to share, something I don't do very often here.

As many of you may remember, I used to regularly share freebies here for you to download and use in your own projects. I am sure that's the main reason the number of my followers grew over the years, both here and particularly also on Pinterest.

Well, I love doing digital designs now and then, so have finally decided to open an Etsy shop where I have made my digital designs as high resolution kits available to all of you who like to use printable papers in your projects.

Below I will share some photos of recent projects I have made using my designs.

This one is the cover of an A 5 journal, made from scratch.

Here you can see the inside of the cover. On the left I have attached some pockets, made out of envelopes, slightly adapting a tutorial on Youtube by MyPorchPrints.
On the right side is the cover of the journal insert that slips underneath the elastic attached to the cover.

And here is the first double page of the insert, I bought a set of 5 of these, and simply covers the covers with some of my papers. They are a great size for my daily journaling. The left side has another litle pocket with some tags and journaling cards that come with the kit that I used for this project. It is called Shabby Rose and has also an add on kit with tags and embellishments that I used for the decorations.
Below another little project, made with my Shabby Journal kit

This little wallet is made from a file folder, and for this I followed and adapted a Youtube tutorial by The BookVandalShop

As you can see there are lots of pockets and flaps, to hold journaling cards, tags, tickets or, if you want to give this as a gift it could hold a giftcard as well of course.

Alright, so now finally to the little gift. I would have liked to make this a freebie, but Etsy does not let you add free items, so I have made the high resolution file as cheap as they would let me. You can find it here

Alternatively, you can download the low resolution file for free from here:o)

Well, that's it for today, thank you so much for visiting! Have a good week and happy crafting!

xxxxx

Beautiful Blooms for A Vintage Journey #89

Hello friends, welcome and like usual, - long time no see... I really hope you are all well and safe in these unusual times...
As I have said in previous posts, I really don't do blogging anymore, but as today sees the start of a new challenge at A Vintage Journey, and blogger is still the platform for our challenges there, - needs musts, - so here goes:



Our theme, as the title of my post suggests, is Beautiful Blooms, and this is what Jennie, our host and queen of beautiful blooms for sure, has to say about it:

Flowers are a perennial favourite for most of us, so this month we would love to see your beautiful blooms showcased on your project. You might choose to use a die cut, stamps, readymade, homemade or pressed flowers .... a single flower or a whole bouquet. Just remember to create your project in one of our preferred styles: vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.


There are of course numerous options with a theme like this, as Jennie says, I decided to go for shabby and used some beautiful digital papers from Gi Kerr .
I created a little folder, that holds a concertina booklet inside as well as some journaling cards.

But let's start with the folder:

I printed one of the papers on A4 paper, backed it with some card and then glued another piece of paper to the inside, all this to make for a strong cover.

I cut it to 5 1/4 " high and 10.5 " long and then scored at 3 3/4, 4, 73/4 and 8" along the long side. This gave me the cover and two 1/4 spines, plus a flap for the cover.

I had sewn around the edges of the first paper already, before backing it with card and the inner paper. The front was then embellished with cut outs from one of the other papers, plus some little flowers, lace, cheese cloth etc, as you can see from the photo.

This little dangly was made  with another cut out.

Here you can see the inside of the folder. I made a lace pocket on the left and on the right you can see the pocket that holds the journaling cards.

Here is a closer view of the pocket. The concertina booklet's cover is similar to the folder one, to make it match.

Here are the pretty journaling cards, I backed them all with white card, for easy writing.

Now to the little concertina booklet, it holds 3 little journals inside made from coffee dyed paper:

Gi Kerr has a brilliant YouTube tutorial of how to put it together, - if you are interested, you can find it here.
I made mine slightly differently, but the principle is the same.

Here you can see what it looks like from the top, with the three little journals inside.

I added some flower stamps to the front and back of each of the little journals and sewed around the covers.

I then sewed them carefully inside the cover of the concertina booklet. (Gi glued hers in with little hinges, but I did not like the look of that, and sewing them in worked just fine)

Well, that's about it, - a fun little project to do while most of the world is locked inside.

And before I end, please check out what my teamies have created and if you want, do join in with our challenge, for after all, who does not like some Beautiful Blooms...

Thank you for visiting today and stay well!!!

xxxxx